:"Instead of holding up a cardboard sign along some busy freeway, Vaughn is getting rides from fellow members of an online community centered on a vlog (video Web log) known as "The Show with Ze Frank" (www.zefrank.com/theshow). He's known as "RunningFool" or "HumanBaton," the names given him on the Web pages that track his progress."

:"Instead of holding up a cardboard sign along some busy freeway, Vaughn is getting rides from fellow members of an online community centered on a vlog (video Web log) known as "The Show with Ze Frank" (www.zefrank.com/theshow). He's known as "RunningFool" or "HumanBaton," the names given him on the Web pages that track his progress."

Revision as of 01:05, 6 January 2007

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2007

"Instead of holding up a cardboard sign along some busy freeway, Vaughn is getting rides from fellow members of an online community centered on a vlog (video Web log) known as "The Show with Ze Frank" (www.zefrank.com/theshow). He's known as "RunningFool" or "HumanBaton," the names given him on the Web pages that track his progress."

"The language earns it an "explicit" label, but the content is mostly satiric good fun. Host Zefrank offers up episodes from his daily life as well as responses to stories in the news. The video podcast debuted in March and will continue for precisely one year."

2006

"Sunday comes and Cherish Pageau (Internet handle: gifa) is so amped up with anticipation, she hops out of bed early. In only a few hours the 30-year-old red-haired Hallmark production artist will be the 12th relay driver in what began last Friday as a wacky, winter-break college adventure but has since turned into, well, a sorta semi quasi half serious Internet experiment of national scope: The trek of the “Human Baton.”"

"Some people start the day with the Wall Street Journal. Me, I start it with ZeFrank's video podcast, and I can't help but applaud his take on America's new proposed luxury-goods sanctions against North Korea."

"Ze Frank's daily video blog looks simple enough... but what takes viewers a few minutes to watch, takes Frank nearly six hours to produce. Coming up with fresh material, he says, is a daily struggle."

"Humorist Ze Frank is 'thinking so you don't have to,' producing short, intense, funny videos capturing his wide-eyed, contorted face every weekday (apparently, he needs the weekends to catch up on his blinking)."

"Ze thinks there is a coming of age happening online... as more people invest more time into these videos, and the prospect of making money actually begins to become real, it makes sense that the discussion begins to turn around who controls what and who makes money."

"Frank's latest ruse is The Show - a daily video in which our hero addresses viewers as 'Sports Racers' and comes across as a grumpy, bug-eyed Max Headroom offering his thoughts on President Bush, airlines and occasionally duckies".

"Consider the story of Hosea Frank, a 'little guy' who has become a big player online thanks to the internet (my prediction: it’s only a matter of time before he’s a household name in entertainment across the board)."

"I'm addicted to ze frank... Today, ze talks about a useless form letter he received from Delta after his flight was canceled and he asked for a refund. Pure vlogcast gold." (more boingboing.net articles...)

"Ze Frank thought that farming out his script would provide some answers. Which explains why at 11 a.m. on June 9 he was sitting before a video camera with freshly dyed red hair, wearing a fake mustache, puffing a fake pipe and stroking a stuffed cat, sitting in an armchair next to a globe, a rubber duck, two pieces of white bread and a framed portrait of Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court justice — an absurd array of props mandated by the script."

"To inspire his audience, Ze composed a ballad, 'If the Earth were a sandwich...' It's hummable. Beautiful even. So for the last few weeks, all over the world people have been rushing about, emailing, texting and trekking in an effort to arrange a simultaneous sandwich moment. This past week, apparently, it happened."

"'Fantasizing aside?' says vlogger genius Ze Frank in a recent installment of his daily three-minute webcast The Show, answering a viewer's question as to what exactly motivates this frenetic exercise in freestyle news commentary, political snarl, and raggedly personal hilarity. 'A side of what? Bacon?'"

"It's like a three- or four-minute-long concentrated, faster-cut, and more sarcastic version of The Daily Show. Absolutely fantastic. The archives go back about a month; I'm rationing them out at just a few a day. I predict this is going to make Ze Frank famous."

"Many would argue with me as to whether I am a blogger or not. I'm still just doing it for the kids. I'm not really interested in monetizing that kind of thing. What I'm looking to do is explore short format content in some kind of episodic way."

2005

"The link was passed around like a virus you wanted to catch; within days millions had logged on, and a Web star was born. Today, Ze's page hosts a huge collection of interactive toys and games, comedic writings and humorous video monologues."

"During a performance at the Technology, Entertainment, and Design Conference in Monterey, California he interrupted his presentation. Feigning uncertainty about where his talk was headed, Frank announced that he would ask Google what he should say next. He typed in the query and like a ventriloquist's dummy, Google delivered up as its top result the first sentence of Frank's next presentation slide."

"Kaleidoscopes are great fun but the results are random. You can be a bit more creative with a web-based Shockwave Flash version, adding a range of dots, lines, squares and simple shapes for effect. The kaleidoscope is the work of freelance artist Hosea "Ze" Frank, whose site offers lots of great things. Last year, he won a Webby Award for the best personal site, by popular vote."